Chapter 3

I endured three full torturous days trapped in the underground lab.

The cancer eating away at my organs, compounded by the toxic experimental serum, wasted my body away at a terrifying speed. I was nothing but skin stretched tight over brittle bones, my skin drained of all color, a sickly ashen gray. I’d resigned myself to dying quietly in this lightless pit when the metal lab door creaked open once more.

This time, my mother stepped inside flanked by several housemaids. Her face was ashen, her eyes wild with frantic anxiety.

“Unhook her at once!” Mother barked out an order.

The maids hauled me off the exam table. My legs buckled instantly, and I crumpled onto the frigid concrete floor without an ounce of strength left to stand.

“Scrub her clean, slip her into that red evening gown, and do her makeup fast,” she rattled off rapidly, never glancing at my battered, broken state. “Hurry up! The Russos are waiting for us at a top-floor Manhattan restaurant!”

I was dragged to the bathroom like a discarded rag doll, cold water sluicing away dried blood and puncture wounds left by needles. As the maids roughly manhandled me, I learned what had transpired.

Cataleya, that fool, had seized a shipment of the Russo family’s arms before her supposed illness and beaten the don’s youngest son badly. The Russos had issued an ultimatum: Cataleya must show up to their dinner tonight to apologize, or they’d wage an all-out blood war with our clan.

Cataleya was now too “frail” to even get out of bed, so naturally, they’d turned to me—her identical twin stand-in.

Once I was squeezed into the lavish scarlet gown and fitted with Cataleya’s signature diamond necklace, Father and Rafael waited for me in the grand entry hall.

“Listen carefullly, Isolde.” Father stepped forward, his gaze ice-cold. “You are Cataleya tonight. Whatever demands the Russos make, you will agree to every single one. If you mess this up and cost the family power or profit, I swear you’ll wish you’d never drawn breath in this world.”

Rafael stood off to the side and pressed a compact Browning handgun into my palm. “Strap it to your thigh holster. If everything spirals out of control, you know what you have to do. Never let the Constantine name lose face.”

I clutched the gun without uttering a word. Staring at the three people who called themselves my family, the last faint flicker of emotion deep inside me fizzled out completely.

The dinner was hosted at an upscale restaurant the Russos had cleared of all other patrons. Don Russo, the head of their crime family, sat at the far end of the long dining table, a dozen armed hitmen posted rigidly behind him. I was shoved forward to stand alone in front of everyone.

“Cataleya Constantine.” Don Russo let out a cold sneer and slid a crystal goblet filled with sickly green liquid across the table toward me. “You shattered my son’s leg. Mafia code demands blood for blood. But I’ll extend a courtesy to your father. Drink this, and all bad blood between our families is wiped clean.”

The liquid reeked of harsh chemical fumes, thin wispy white bubbles curling up along the glass walls. It was highly concentrated corrosive poison.

Our family’s bodyguard paled and moved to intervene, only for Russo’s men to press gun barrels straight to his skull.

“What’s this? Too cowardly to drink it?” Don Russo taunted me.

I knew if I refused, the entire restaurant would erupt into a brutal shootout. Once, I would’ve crumpled into despair, clinging to the faint hope that Rafael would rush in to save me. Now, the whole situation struck me as utterly ridiculous.

I reached out without hesitation, grabbing the crystal cup. Under every pair of stunned eyes in the room, I tilted my head back and drained the burning green fluid in one single gulp.

Fire. Pure, unfiltered hellfire seared straight down my throat. I could feel my esophagus and vocal cords burning and dissolving on the spot.

Agony wracked my body so violently I coughed up a torrent of black, charred chunks mixed with blood, staining the crisp white tablecloth crimson.

I crashed heavily to the floor, my body convulsing uncontrollably. I pried my mouth open, gasping for air, yet all that escaped was a raspy, wheezing rattle like a broken bellows.

My vocal cords were destroyed beyond repair.

Don Russo stared down at me writhing on the floor, a flicker of shock crossing his face before he waved a hand dismissively. “Constantine women have grit. Get her out of my sight.”

“Boss, wait!” a scarred lieutenant interrupted, his eyes gleaming with predatory malice. “Just a drink? That’s entirely too cheap for a Constantine. She crippled your boy.”

The lieutenant and two other thugs lunged at me.

Rough, filthy hands grabbed my hair and violently ripped at my scarlet evening gown. The delicate silk tore with a sickening rip, exposing my bruised, emaciated skin. I thrashed wildly, trying to fight them off, but my cancer-ridden body was as weak as a crushed insect.

They pinned me down, their foul breath hot against my face as they began pulling at my undergarments. The room echoed with their cruel, mocking laughter. The Constantine guards stood frozen, outnumbered with guns to their heads, watching my humiliation.

Despair suffocated me. As I struggled, my trembling hand brushed against the cold metal holstered to my thigh.

Rafael’s Browning.

With a final, agonizing surge of adrenaline fueled by pure survival instinct, I wrenched my right arm free, drew the gun, and pulled the slide.

Click.

The sharp, metallic sound made the thugs freeze. But I didn't aim at them. Instead, I jammed the cold steel barrel aggressively beneath my own chin.

Don Russo’s face instantly drained of color. He wanted humiliation, not a full-scale, mutually assured destructive blood war that would inevitably erupt if the Constantine heir blew her own brains out at his dinner table.

“Back off!” Russo roared, slamming his fist onto the table in sudden panic. “Get away from her! Touch her again and I’ll put a bullet in you myself!” He pointed a shaking finger at our guards. “Get this crazy bitch out of my sight. Now!”

I kept the gun glued to my jaw, my finger trembling over the trigger, not daring to lower it until our guards dragged me out of that hellhole.

Our guards dragged me back to the estate. When they tossed my blood-soaked, limp body onto the living room carpet, no one rushed to check if I was alive.

“Look what she’s done!” Mother shrieked, her panic not for me at all. “That scarlet dress was Cataleya’s favorite! It’s completely ruined with blood!”

Father frowned as he glanced at my twitching form. “At least she resolved the conflict. As long as she’s still breathing, it’s fine.”

Rafael lingered on the staircase, staring down at my agonized spasms with a flash of tangled emotion in his eyes—though he quickly turned away. “If she’s still alive, haul her back down to the basement. We need one final trial run for Cataleya’s antidote.”

Lying in a puddle of my own blood, I listened to their merciless words and pulled my lips into a silent, bitter smile.

I wonder if any of you will regret it the day I die.

I was dragged back down to that frigid underground lab once again.

This time, I did not have the strength to struggle at all. The poison had burned my throat into raw, mangled tissue; every inhale brought tearing pain thick with the metallic stench of blood. Cancer had spread through every organ in my frame, my vital systems shutting down visibly by the minute.

The chemists paid no mind to my devastated state. Within the Constantine family, if the don hadn’t ordered the trials halted, they would drive a needle into a corpse without a second thought.

“This is the final high-dose neutralizing serum,” one chemist said, stepping over to me with a massive syringe brimming with bright blue fluid. “If she survives this round, Miss Cataleya’s antidote will be fully perfected.”

I lay motionless on the stainless steel table, my hollow gaze fixed on the surgical lamps overhead. When the thick needle pierced my vein and the icy blue fluid flooded my already ravaged bloodstream, the last spark of life left in me snuffed out entirely.

The two lethal toxins clashed violently inside my body, amplified by the advanced cancer ravaging every inch of me. My heart could no longer withstand the torture. A searing, crushing pain exploded in my chest, and the heart that had beaten for twenty years, begging for even a crumb of love, slowed steadily until it stopped for good.

A shrill, continuous alarm blared from the cardiac monitor. The jagged peaks of the heartbeat trace flattened into a straight, lifeless green line.

Beep——————

“Heart rate gone! No detectable blood pressure!”